Speaker of the House. Kunduz. Doctors Without Borders. Russia. Iran. Obama. Putin. Rupert Murdoch and “real blackness.” Paul Prudhomme. Spencer Stone. Sepp Blatter. Svetlana Alexievich.
Letter From New York originates in Minneapolis today, where the sun burst through the sky and it was charming this morning, warm after a light rain last night. But, alas, now the sun has slipped behind dark clouds and rain is threatening.
Tonight I will be having dinner with Jean Cronin Olson, who once, very long ago was a student of mine and in the intervening years, for the most part, we have kept in touch and often when I am in Minneapolis we gather for coffee and a long chat. Tonight it’s dinner at her home with her husband Jon and whatever of her four children will be about.
The idea that my students have adult children is very sobering to me.
Sobering to the Republican Party was the unexpected announcement that Kevin McCarthy, widely thought to be the man who would replace John Boehner as Speaker of the House, was withdrawing his name from consideration. Apparently, he, like Boehner, doesn’t want to content with the forty or so hard to the right, Tea Party Republicans who think they should be running the show.
By all accounts, it’s all rather mad and according to the Washington Post, very much like Neflix’s political drama, “House of Cards.” Now who will be playing Francis Underwood in this real life drama?
President Obama phoned Dr. Joanne Liu, the head of Doctors Without Borders and offered an apology for the bombing of their hospital in Kunduz. At least thirty-three workers are dead. She has acknowledged she “received” the apology but there is no indication that she has accepted it. She wants an independent investigation of the incident.
Russia has been firing missiles from ships in the Caspian Sea at targets in Syria. Four of them fell short and landed in rural Iran. I wonder what the Ayatollah thinks about that?
Putin turned 63 and celebrated with a lot of hockey themed events. He and his staff played against a team of professional Russian players. Not so shockingly in today’s Russia, Putin’s team won! Imagine that! And Putin got a gold medal for the most successful shots. Amazing! Is there nothing this man can’t do brilliantly?
He is, in fact, if not in title, Tsar Vladimir of Russia. But let us not forget the brutal end of the last real Tsar. Nicholas II and his family ended in front of a firing squad.
Rupert Murdoch is one of the “Tsars” of global media. He has become infatuated with Ben Carson and tweeted that he wondered what it would be like to have a “real” black President. Rupert has since apologized. As he should.
In the 1990’s the great television gathering called NATPE [National Association of Television Programming Executives] met one year in Las Vegas and the following year in New Orleans. On one of the New Orleans’ excursions I met Paul Prudhomme, the Cajun chef, who passed away today after at short illness at 75. He shot around his restaurant on an electric scooter. He was near his heaviest at the time, weighing well over 550 pounds. It was a good meal.
Spencer Stone, who helped stop a massacre on a French train a few weeks ago, was stabbed in Sacramento early this morning after leaving a nightclub. Seriously wounded, he is expected to survive.
Sepp Blatter, President of FIFA, has been suspended. So have a few other senior officials. One wonders who is running the place though one has wondered that even when they were there.
And finally, Svetlana Alexeivich, a writer from Belarus, has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. She tells history through the voices of people who lived it. Hats off.
Soon it is time for me to go and get ready for dinner. May yours be good.
Letter from the Vineyard 
Letter From Claverack 01 29 2017 The Game is afoot…
January 30, 2017It is a little past seven at the cottage; the weekend is winding down, “Swing Jazz” is the Amazon music station playing. Marcel, Lionel and Pierre’s poodle, is situated comfortably on the couch, looking at the door to see when they will return, which will be in a few days. The flood lights illuminate the creek and I am at the freshly polished dining room table, writing.
It’s the end of a good weekend, mostly very “hygge.” [Pronounced hoo-ga, it’s Danish for living a cozy life.] And it’s been a cozy weekend. Young Nick has returned from his walkabout and came over Friday afternoon and helped me prepare for what turned out to be a most excellent dinner party.
Saturday was cleaning up and being domestic, a solo lunch at the Dot, dinner with Lionel and Pierre at their house, home to sleep.
But all the hygge in my life has been overshadowed and squeezed by the events in the world around me. President Trump has been issuing Executive Orders to his heart’s content. They feel a bit like Imperial Edicts. Do this. Ban that. It’s been stunning. And equally stunning is the response of the American public.
When he banned individuals from seven countries, all primarily Muslim, from entering the United States, hordes of lawyers went to airports and became filing appeals, sitting on the floor in the terminals, laptops plugged into whatever outlet could be found.
It made me proud.
At those same airports, crowds appeared. At JFK, several New York Congressmen were there, attempting to help. One quarantined gentleman was an Iraqi citizen who was on his way to the US because he had been an interpreter for our soldiers and his life was in danger. Thankfully, he was released.
People with green cards are in limbo, depending on the airport they flew into. Federal Judges are ordering limits on Trump’s ruling and some officials are ignoring them.
Excuse me, what? What?
Heads are spinning.
Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief political operative, has been given a seat on the National Security Council while the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staffs and the Director of National Intelligence have been demoted.
What? What?
In the morning now, I get up, make my coffee and call my Senators and my Representative in Congress and tomorrow I don’t know what issue to focus on. There are so many.
A relative sent me a clip of a State of the Union Address given by Bill Clinton, in which he talked about the dangers of illegal immigration. The headline before the clip was “The hypocrisy of liberals!”
Well, really, hypocrisy? Take a look at this article. Mike Pence opposed what Trump has done and now is praising it. Is that not hypocrisy? Political opportunism?
Immigration has been an issue ever since we stopped accepting just about everybody. Don’t know about you, but I’m here, an American citizen, because my great grandparents came over from Germany and settled in Minnesota. Back then, almost everyone was taken in. [Though my great grandparents arrived in First Class so they didn’t have to go through the indignities of Ellis Island.]
Then it changed and immigration has been an issue ever since. Okay, I get that. And what President Trump has done is unprecedented. His list of excluded countries does not include Saudi Arabia from which came many of the 9/11 hijackers. It does not exclude Pakistan, one of whose citizens was part of the Riverside massacre. It’s a bit bewildering. The banned countries have barely contributed to the numbers who have died from terrorist acts in the US.
And, amazingly, it appears the list was compiled during the Obama Administration but never activated. Boggles the mind.
Not even during Viet Nam was I this agitated. Agitated does not describe my mood when I am not working very hard at hygge.
In an article I scanned two days ago, it speculated that Trump may be to Millennials what Viet Nam was to my generation, a catalytic event.
You see, there is a movement to stop abortions. There is a generation of young women who have grown up believing they had the right of choice. Now some people want to take that it away from them. No, not happy. And abortions have been decreasing and in 2014 were the lowest since 1973.
There are young people who are in college whose friends are in limbo because they come from one of the banned countries and went home over winter break and may not be able to come back despite having valid visas.
And there are people like me, a Baby Boomer grown old, who is incensed in a way I have not been for god alone knows how many years. The protests will not stop. They will not go away. The country is fired up in a way that hasn’t been seen since Viet Nam.
Wow! The games have begun.
To be completely clear, I am one of the founders of Blue DOT [Democracy Opposing Trump] Hudson Indivisible. It is my time of being an activist. This Presidency must be opposed. It is divisive. It is immoral. It has in its first week demonstrated a willingness to flaunt conventional order.
Tomorrow I am calling the office of John McCain and Lindsey Graham who are opposing Trump to thank them for their efforts. We are all in for a rocky ride and maybe this was a good thing to happen.
The Left is galvanized the way the Right was when Obama was elected and already seems, and I hope it continues, to be more emphatic than the Tea Party movement.
The game is afoot…
Tags:Amanzon, Baby Boomers, Bill Clinton, Blue DOT Hudson, Hygee, immigration, Lionel White, Mike Pence, Muslim ban, Obama, Pierre Font, President Trump, Saudi Arabia, Steve Bannon, Tea Party, The game is afoot, Viet Nam, Young Nick
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